Zurich Open Repository and Archive University of Zurich Main Library Strickhofstrasse 39 CH-8057 Zurich www.zora.uzh.ch Year: 2012 What is social equality? An Analysis of status equality as a strongly egalitarian ideal Fourie, Carina Abstract: What kind of equality should we value and why? Current debate centres around whether distributive equality is valuable. However, it is not the only (potentially) morally significant form of equality. David Miller and T. M. Scanlon have emphasised the importance of social equality—a strongly egalitarian notion distinct from distributive equality, and which cannot be reduced to a concern for overall welfare or the welfare of the worst-off. However, as debate tends to focus on distribution, social equality has been neglected and we do not have a clear understanding of what it is and why it might be valuable. This paper aims to address this gap. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11158-011-9162-2 Posted at the Zurich Open Repository and Archive, University of Zurich ZORA URL: https://doi.org/10.5167/uzh-53362 Journal Article Published Version Originally published at: Fourie, Carina (2012). What is social equality? An Analysis of status equality as a strongly egalitarian ideal. Res Publica, 18(2):107-126. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11158-011-9162-2 Res Publica (2012) 18:107–126 DOI 10.1007/s11158-011-9162-2 What is Social Equality? An Analysis of Status Equality as a Strongly Egalitarian Ideal Carina Fourie Published online: 22 July 2011 Ó Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011 Abstract What kind of equality should we value and why? Current debate centres around whether distributive equality is valuable. However, it is not the only (potentially) morally significant form of equality. David Miller and T. M. Scanlon have emphasised the importance of social equality—a strongly egalitarian notion distinct from distributive equality, and which cannot be reduced to a concern for overall welfare or the welfare of the worst-off. However, as debate tends to focus on distribution, social equality has been neglected and we do not have a clear under- standing of what it is and why it might be valuable. This paper aims to address this gap. Keywords Social equality Á Status Á Egalitarianism Á Distributive justice Á David Miller Á T. M. Scanlon Introduction In the US, black people were often expected to step off the pavement to get out of the way of approaching whites.1 In apartheid South Africa, black people were expected to call white men ‘Baas’, which means ‘Boss’ in Afrikaans, and white women, ‘Madam’.2 Although typically this is what black people would call their white employers, they were often expected to call any white people, including strangers, ‘Baas’ or ‘Madam’. White people, on the other hand, would often refer to 1 See, for example, Jennie Brown’s (1994, p. 26) biography of the civil rights activist, Medgar Evers. 2 For examples, see Nelson Mandela’s (1995, pp. 145, 413) autobiography. C. Fourie (&) Ethics Research Institute, University of Zurich, Zollikerstrasse 117, 8008 Zurich, Switzerland e-mail: [email protected] 123 108 C. Fourie adult blacks as ‘boy’ or ‘girl’. These are examples of what can be called social inequality. Now, it is obvious that inequalities between races, and particularly those of apartheid, whether inequalities in income distribution, power or political partici- pation, for example, are gross violations of justice. The point of identifying social equality, however, is to say that the inequalities associated with having to get out of someone else’s way merely because you belong to one group and they to another are wrong even if there are no (other) violations of justice3 associated with these inequalities.4 In this paper, I argue that social equality is a significant and distinct, yet neglected, component of what it means to treat people as equals.5 Discussions of equality in contemporary philosophy tend to be dominated by questions about the role of equality in distributive justice, in other words, by what can be called ‘distributive equality’. Debate tends to centre around two primary topics: (1) the currency of justice, in other words, what kind of equality is important, e.g. resources, welfare, or capabilities,6 and (2) the pattern of distribution, in other words, whether equality per se is indeed significant, or whether justice will be better served through sufficiency (providing ‘enough’) or prioritising resources for the worst off.7 While debate centres on these two topics, social equality is mainly neglected. This neglect is regrettable, however. As Scanlon (2000) has highlighted, this form of equality is one of the few genuinely egalitarian notions of equality. In contrast, many theorists are beginning to doubt that what tends to be referred to as distributive equality has much to do with equality per se, and is, arguably, more to 3 I discuss social inequalities as separable from violations of justice such as violations in the distributions of material goods and in power and political participation, for example, even though they often occur in conjunction with violations of justice or can lead to these violations of justice. However it is possible to see violations of social inequality as injustices in of themselves, beyond merely being morally objectionable. I take no particular stance on whether, as morally objectionable inequalities, social inequalities are also indeed injustices. I thus say (other) violations of justice to take account of the view that social inequalities could indeed, but need not be, violations of justice. 4 There could be practical reasons why some people (one group) should get out of other people’s way (another group)—for example, it might be expected that if you are able-bodied or unencumbered, you should be expected to get out of the way of someone who has difficulty walking or is carrying heavy burdens. These would not be examples of social inequality—if anything they could be seen as means for trying to achieve equality through compensation. 5 As social inequalities tend to occur along with other kinds of injustices, the distinction I draw between social equality and overlapping but distinct notions such as distributive equality is primarily analytical. 6 See, for example, Rawls on primary goods as an example of the resourcist approach (1999, Sect. 11, pp. 54–55; Sect. 15, pp. 78–81. I will refer throughout this paper to this edition of A Theory of Justice, revised from the original of 1971) and Dworkin (1981a, b) for a defence of resourcism and criticism of welfarism. See also Sen (1982), Nussbaum (2000) and Anderson (2010) on capabilities, and Arneson (1989, 2006) for his defence of equal opportunity for welfare as the currency of justice, and criticism of the capabilities approach. 7 See, for example, Lucas (1965), Frankfurt (1987) and Crisp (2003) on sufficiency, and Parfit (1997)on the priority view as an alternative to valuing equality of welfare per se. For a defence of equality as valuable per se, see Temkin (1993, 2003). For a recent clarification and criticism of sufficiency, and its relationship to equality and priority, see Casal (2007), and for a clarification and defence of egalitariainism, see O’Neill (2008). 123 What is Social Equality? 109 do with alleviating the deprivation suffered by those who are worst off in society. If we want to identify when inequalities are wrong, we need to move beyond merely focusing on distributive equality. Although some theorists such as Miller (1998) and Scanlon (2000, n.d.) have provided nascent descriptions of social equality and its import, there is a lack of clarity about this notion of equality and, subsequently, we require much greater analysis. This paper aims to address this gap. As the notion of social equality is neglected, and thus we need to start analysing social equality from the ground up, this paper will focus on asking and providing in- depth answers to two rudimentary but essential questions: (1) What is social equality? and (2) Why is it valuable? Answering these questions can help to lay the groundwork for developing an extensive theory of social equality. There are three sections to this paper. In the next section, I briefly highlight recent discussions about social equality to provide a context for the more in-depth analysis in the following sections, which aim, respectively, to answer the two primary research questions identified above. In the section after that, I describe social equality as consisting of, at least, one necessary condition—an opposition to hierarchies of social status—and identify a distinction between what I refer to as direct and indirect social inequalities. In the last section I consider the value of social equality, focusing particularly on the harms of inequality to those of higher status, mainly as this has been neglected. Intimations of Social Equality Miller (1998) has distinguished two types of equality: (1) distributive equality, which requires that certain social goods are distributed equally as a requirement of justice and (2) social equality, which identifies a social ideal—‘the ideal of a society that is not marked by status divisions such that one can place different people in hierarchically ranked categories’ (Miller 1998, p. 23). Most discussions of equality seem to be about the former kind, and yet Miller believes that it is important not to neglect social equality as it identifies ‘a form of life in which people in a very important sense treat one another as equals’ (Miller 1998, p. 32). Scanlon (2000) considers a similar notion of equality, claiming it constitutes one of the few genuinely egalitarian reasons why we object to inequality. He identifies five primary reasons why it could be said to be important to eliminate inequalities, not all of which are actually egalitarian.